A shifting landscape: Anticipating and addressing risk as general counsel

As general counsel, you are asked to balance many roles: legal advisor, corporate strategist, crisis manager. However, in a continually growing business environment, one more position needs to be added to the top of your already swaying pile of responsibilities – risk mitigator.

Risk is a part of business. However, that doesn’t mean your company wants to be surprised with huge fines because you weren’t prepared for a surprise change in the regulatory or geopolitical environment.

So, how do you plan for the risks of tomorrow, today?

Know your landscape

The C-suite turns to you for legal guidance – especially when the chance for incurring risk is significant. This, plus the pace of your day-to-day workflow, can quickly become overwhelming, increasing the opportunity for mistakes.

But it isn’t just about keeping up. You must maintain, improve, and seek out solutions for regulation governance, risk, and compliance, all while establishing and educating corporate leaders and stakeholders on best practices.

So how do you keep up with an industry (or in some cases, multiple industries) while also ensuring the companies well-being when you never know when a change will happen?

Identify your risks

As general counsel, you are undoubtedly aware of the myriad of risks that face your company, from privacy breaches to questions of regulatory enforcement.

However, identifying risk – be it financial, regulatory, or privacy concerns – is only the starting point. Being able to assess and solve potential corporate risks can save the company substantial fines and – perhaps more importantly – save them from the possible hit on reputation.

However, it’s more than just the company’s reputation that’s at stake. Your standing within the company is based on your legal knowledge and expertise. However, you aren’t a fortune teller. And even the most diligent and forward-thinking general counsel won’t be able to predict every twist and turn in the regulatory and political world.

Increase your know-how

In a complex and volatile political and regulatory environment, risk management is a full-time job. But it’s also only one part of your role. So what do you do?

You could hire top experts and task them with staying on top of the issues that impact your business (possible, but unrealistically expensive) or you could find a way to tap into a group of experts who are dedicated to staying on top of these issues.

With its 230+ expert attorney editors, Practical Law gives you access to an unprecedented depth of knowledge and experience, no matter the legal or regulatory question. These are attorneys who have not only been in your chair—they also work every day to help general counsels just like you anticipate, mitigate, and solve complex legal and regulatory problems.

And that expert guidance means more efficient work for you. It means not only having an answer when the C-suite asks but having the processes and solutions in place before they realize there’s a problem.